


The Softness of His Lips

by Sherbet_Sundae



Series: Reflections [1]
Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Bullying, F/M, First Kiss, I've only had Yeza for a few days but if anything happened to him..., halfling puppy love, violence in the form of kids hurting other kids
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-29
Updated: 2019-01-29
Packaged: 2019-10-18 13:42:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,070
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17581970
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sherbet_Sundae/pseuds/Sherbet_Sundae
Summary: Veth is not pretty or brave or coordinated or smart. Yeza seems to like her anyway.





	The Softness of His Lips

**Author's Note:**

> Guess who suddenly relates to an alcoholic goblin?
> 
> I identify with weird little girls that have compulsions, obsessions, and poor impulse control on a spiritual level. Growing up being bullied mercilessly because of that, finding that one person that seems to like you anyway, building a life together, your shitty habits mellowing out and being easier to control as you mature... and then being murdered and turned into a physical manifestation of everything you hate about yourself. That's just how it be sometimes.
> 
> So I wrote a fic about characters and events likely to be jossed. Because I love dying and being dead.

 

Veth had to spend sunny days outside. When the chores were finished her mother insisted. Sometimes she sighed and asked her to leave before even that, frowning wearily at the shattered vase on a newly swept floor or at the soup boiling over on the stove. Veth wasn’t good at much.

 

They didn’t let her in the shops. Not anymore. Not alone. She took things. Small things. Things that were shiny or colorful or pleasant to touch. People asked her to turn out her pockets a lot.

 

The girls in town weren’t her friends. She tried to talk to them, but they didn’t like the things she liked. Once she showed them her collection of colored paper. Sixteen pieces of it varying in thickness and shape and hue.

 

They burned them one by one over a lit candle. Veth had watched the colors darken and the edges curl. The girls laughed. “It’s trash? Why are you crying over trash?”

 

Boys were better. Mostly. Her brothers had to be somewhere else first. She couldn’t be around the boys if her brothers were there. They would set their friends on her like hunting dogs. Veth was very fast, but she wasn’t always fast enough.

 

The boys weren’t as bold if her brothers weren’t around. They weren’t so sure about chasing her then. They didn’t want to take the blame for a stained dress or a scraped knee.

 

She could stand near them then. She kept quiet, kept a few yards away. They said unkind things. Sometimes to her. Sometimes to each other. Loudly so they knew that she would hear.

 

Her face was too round, too plain. She didn’t brush her hair, probably didn’t wash it. She was quiet because she didn’t have anything smart to say, didn’t have any thoughts worth saying. You could see it in her eyes like a farm animal. Vacant. There wasn’t anything going on in there, they said.

 

That wasn’t true. Veth could talk. She didn’t mind talking. It was just that people said her voice was grating or that she was too loud. Veth didn’t doubt she wasn’t all that smart. It had taken her a lot longer than her brothers to learn even the simplest of lessons. But that wasn’t why she was quiet.

 

Veth was quiet the day it happened.

 

They had been playing hide and seek. Veth didn’t care for the game. They never found her, and she knew it wasn’t because she was good at hiding.

 

Veth came down from the tree on her own and crossed the field to the boys. She stopped a little ways away, close enough to hear but well out of arm’s reach. Her hand was in her front dress pocket. There was a button there. It was smooth, an eggshell white, pearlescent. She had snapped it off her mother’s winter coat that morning on a whim. If she forgot to sew it back on before the seasons changed she would get in a lot of trouble.

 

The boys weren’t as boisterous as usual. They kept looking back at her, whispering then laughing. It was what the girls did. In her experience, boys were more direct with the nasty things they said. She got ready to run.

 

“Hey, Veth. Have you ever kissed a boy?”

 

She hadn’t, but they didn’t need to be told that.

 

“Yeza hasn’t ever kissed a girl. You should give him a kiss.”

 

They shoved Yeza forward. He dug in his heels, but he wasn’t very big and was easily overpowered. “Stop it!” he yelped at them, face flushed.

 

“It’s good practice for the real thing.”

 

“Don’t be a chicken.”

 

“I’ll give you a copper.”

 

It was easier to just do what they wanted sometimes. Veth knew that. Yeza knew it too. He closed the distance between them without looking her in the eye. “Um.” He shifted his weight from one foot to the other. “Do you want to?” he asked.

 

Veth glanced to the other boys. “Do it! Do it!” chanted two of them. The third just laughed, the sound muffled behind his hands.

 

It felt like there was a small and terrified bird trapped inside her ribcage. “I guess,” said Veth, because a kiss with a boy was something she wanted to experience and when would she have an opportunity to do that outside of now?

 

Yeza didn’t know where to put his hands. She jumped when they brushed her waist and the other boys laughed louder. Veth’s face felt hot. Yeza shifted his weight from foot to foot, anxious. His hands settled awkwardly against her forearms. Veth had to lean down a little so that their lips could meet.

 

There were apples growing this time of year. He smelled like the green ones tasted. His lips were soft and warm. When the two of them drew away from one another, Veth was very aware that her own were chapped.

 

Yeza’s hands lingered. Just for a second, but it felt like longer. Veth didn’t like looking people in the eye, but it still happened. The warmth left her body. She felt the gooseflesh rising on her arms as he stepped away.

 

Yeza turned. “Happy?” he asked the boys.

 

Two of the boys kept laughing. “Gross,” said the third and tossed Yeza a copper. It caught the light of the midday sun before he caught it.

 

Veth turned and walked toward the trees, toward the river beyond them. She didn’t know what else to do.

 

“Where are you going? Hey! Where are you going?! Your girlfriend is getting away, Yeza.”

 

“Oh, man. Tough break. I think you just got rejected.”

 

Veth started running.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

She thought about the kiss a lot. Touched her calloused fingers to her lips instead of worrying them around the familiar edges of the button in her pocket.

 

Veth had never had any strong feelings towards Yeza. She had never had any strong feelings about anyone. They existed and so did she, apart from them. And that was okay. It was what she knew.

 

It was different now. Her heart beat faster when she passed him in the fields or on the roads. He didn’t look at her, not even when one of the other boys elbowed and pointed. Veth was glad he didn’t look. There was a novel’s worth of thoughts all crowded in her head that he would almost certainly be able to read if he looked her in the eyes again.

 

Veth slipped an apple into her overalls when she brought the last bushel in. It settled against her left hip, and she felt it round and solid as she walked to the river.

 

She liked the river, liked going to it when she wanted to be alone or needed a place to hide. She knelt on the bank and splashed cool water on her face. She rubbed the sweat from the back of her neck. They were almost into the colder seasons but work and emotions had her overheated.

 

The apple was crisp and tart. She wiped juice from her chin and thought again of Yeza.

 

And then she thought of other things. She needed to climb into the crawl space tonight, to find the spot where mother’s coat was folded and stored away. She needed to sew the button back on and not get caught.

 

She needed to find a new hiding spot for her collections. Her oldest brother had found the loose floorboard in the pantry. She needed to get her things back from him. She couldn’t tell her parents. They wouldn’t understand.

 

“Um.”

 

The voice came from behind Veth and she jumped, the half-eaten apple falling from her hand and rolling down the river bank. It was Yeza, fidgeting with the hem of his shirt while he watched her from between the trees.

 

“Hey,” he said. And then, “Sorry.”

 

Veth wasn’t sure if he was apologizing for the apple now floating down river or for the kiss. “It’s fine.” Because whatever he was apologizing for, it was.

 

Yeza approached, and then he stopped. He reached a hand into his pocket. “I just… I feel weird about this,” he said and pulled out a copper. “Do you want it?”

 

Veth’s face felt hot, but it couldn’t have been redder than the shade Yeza was turning. He seemed to think better of what he’d just asked. His hand closed tight around the coin. “Sorry,” he said again.

 

“I don’t want it,” Veth said plainly. She didn’t tell him it was fine. It wasn’t. It was humiliating.

 

“Can I sit down?” asked Yeza.

 

“I guess.”

 

They sat together for a while, stiff and silent and a few feet apart. Veth turned the coat button in her hand. Yeza turned the copper. After what felt like a very long time, he threw it into the river.

 

“Can we kiss again?” he asked.

 

“I guess,” she answered. And they did.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

They kissed alone and often. At the river usually. It was private there.

 

It was a while before they talked. Really talked. Yeza enjoyed things like she enjoyed things. Quietly or loudly and all at once. There was no in-between. The way he talked about chemical reactions and rare reagents made Veth think no one listened to him about these things often— or, at least, not for very long.

 

“Am I talking too much?” he would ask, stopping halfway through a thought.

 

And he was, but Veth didn’t want to tell him that. He liked alchemy like Veth liked her collections, like she liked him. She was beginning to think he liked her too.

 

He brought her flowers sometimes. The wild ones that grew at the edges of the tillage in great swathes of purple and yellow and blue. She could have picked them for herself and had before. It was different when he gave them to her though. He did it when she was sad mostly. That he could tell bothered her. She had always thought that walling off her emotions to the outside world was something she did without trying. Either Yeza was very observant or no one had really cared before. It wasn’t something she wanted to wonder too hard about.

 

“Are you okay?” He handed her the flowers and touched the bruises on her arm. He wanted her to talk and gradually she did. She told him about the loose floorboard in her pantry. About how she’d lost her temper with her brother, tried to reclaim the collection he’d stolen from her. She had failed. It was all gone now.

 

Yeza didn’t understand the appeal of things that were shiny and small and pleasantly shaped. He understood how cruel brothers could be, though. Hers in particular. He knew how useless parents could be too.

 

Yeza didn’t bring flowers the next day, but he did bring three glass vials. One had a murky brownish liquid in it, his first try at a dye he wanted to show her. The other two were empty and for her to keep. “I mean, if you want them. I have a bunch. They’re kind of shiny, right?”

 

She kissed him again.

 

 

* * *

 

 

People noticed. They didn’t hold hands or even talk much when they weren’t alone, but people still noticed. Felderwin was small.

 

There had been a neighbor girl Veth had played with when she was very little. Over time, she had drifted away. Had wanted to play with the other girls and had made excuses as to why Veth couldn’t come. She expected Yeza to do the same, for the glances and the whispers to weigh down on him. He had friends, Veth thought. At the very least he had other boys who tolerated him well enough that he wasn’t expected to stand apart from them when they met to talk and play.

 

Adults liked Yeza. They whispered too, concern on their faces. He was a good boy, they said. When he was with her, she was allowed in shops again. It was like she was a better person by being adjacent to him. That was probably what the adults were so plainly worried about, that she was siphoning that goodness away. It went in both directions, didn’t it? That he would be a worse person for knowing her was not only likely, it was inevitable.

 

Veth still stole things sometimes. Yeza saw her slip a string of glass beads into her pocket once. When they were alone he frowned and asked her why. She didn’t know how to answer him, and he didn’t talk to her for a few days after that.

 

He never told her he was angry. Didn’t raise his voice and wouldn’t explicitly tell her when she had done something wrong. She wasn’t sure he could. Maybe that was why he had friends. He let things happen. Veth could close her eyes and see his face in the crowd of kids calling her names. He had never had a harsh word for her, but she couldn’t be sure he didn’t still think them.

 

Veth’s brothers had a lot of things they thought about her. They had a lot of things they thought about her and Yeza.

 

“You’re not, like, doing stuff with him, are you?”

 

Veth had vague ideas about what adults and other kids did alone together. She spent enough time around boys. She shared a room with her brothers.

 

“You are, aren’t you? That’s why he’s spending so much time with you.”

 

“It’s not like that. Leave me alone.”

 

“I’m gonna tell Mom.”

 

But he didn’t tell their mother. He said something to Yeza and that felt worse somehow. She saw him at the stables with his sleeve rolled up, showing Yeza the scar where she’d once bitten him so hard it broke the skin. He’d held her down. She didn’t remember why or if there was even a reason at all. She only remembered the wooden floor at her back and his hands on her shoulders. She remembered teeth sinking into skin and the punishment she’d gotten after. Mother had been horrified. “You don’t bite people. I shouldn’t even have to tell you that. That’s not something a lady does. That’s not something a _person_ does.”

 

 

“I don’t think your brother likes me,” Yeza told her at the river that evening. She didn’t think he would come. She hadn’t asked him to. He came anyway. He brought flowers.

 

“He doesn’t like me either.” _Do_ you _like me?_ Veth wanted to ask. Did he want to do more than kiss her? Was that why he spent so much time with her? Veth wondered if she would let him if it came down to it. Whatever this was between them, it was something. It wasn’t disgust. It wasn’t being alone.

 

“Um… Can I?” Yeza touched her neck and Veth felt afraid. He didn’t seem to notice. Probably because she was afraid a lot.

 

But Yeza didn’t want anything from her. Nothing like that anyway. He didn’t even kiss her. He was pulling back her hair. “Do you still have those fabric swatches?”

 

“Yeah. A bunch. Why?”

 

“Can I have a couple? I think I fixed what was wrong with that dye I showed you, but I don’t have anything to test it on.”

 

“Can I have them back after?”

 

“I mean… Yeah.”

 

“Then sure.” Veth could still feel his hands in her hair. “What are you doing?”

 

“I don’t know. Braiding it, I guess. Do you want me to stop?”

 

It felt nice. She wasn’t sure anyone had braided her hair before. She hadn’t. Her mother hadn’t. “No. That’s okay.”

 

They talked and Yeza braided flowers into her hair. Wildflowers from the edge of the tillage that were purple and yellow and blue. She looked at her reflection in the river when he was finished. “It’s pretty.”

 

“Yeah,” said Yeza. And she wasn’t sure if he was talking about her hair. He smiled at her, and she thought she was probably smiling too.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

Veth brought him _all_ of her fabric swatches. He said he didn’t need them all, but she insisted. “Just give them back when you’re done.”

 

The dye was a pretty, rich color. It stained her hands emerald, but she didn’t stop turning it over and over in the sunlight.

 

“Do you think it’s okay?”

 

“It’s beautiful. You’re really… You’re really smart.”

 

Yeza’s face was red when Veth looked up. “I don’t know about that. I can show you how to do it, though… If you want.”

 

“I don’t think I could.” But she did. Yeza taught her. She didn’t think she was very good at it. She didn’t have steady hands or an eye for measuring things out like he did. It made him happy, though. Veth recognized the feeling, the way he talked louder and faster and longer. It was how she felt when he helped her find pretty rocks in newly plowed fields. She wanted that for him. Wanted him to have that kind of happiness because he had given it to her.

 

“Can I keep these?” Yeza asked, tugging at the splotchy corner of one of the swatches she had laid out to dry. And she wasn’t sure why, but she wanted him to have that too. Something they made together. It felt right.

 

“Your first collection.”

 

Yeza laughed. He had a good laugh. She only heard it when they were alone. “Yeah.”

 

And then he braided her hair again while they waited for the swatches to stop dripping. Veth didn’t think she had ever liked anything more than him.

 

 

* * *

 

 

Braids were easy to grab. Veth realized that as her head snapped back and her feet flew out from under her. It was a bad day. She’d been caught trying to steal a bracelet. It was silver, probably expensive. The value of it wasn’t what had drawn Veth’s eye, but that didn’t matter. The shopkeeper had been angry enough to get a Crownsguard involved. They had dragged her home by the arm. Her mother had cried. That made her oldest brother angry. Very angry.

 

She’d climbed out the bedroom window to get away from him, but it was raining heavily. The ground was soft. She made it as far as the wheat field before he caught up. She landed hard on the muddy slope of an irrigation channel, head wrenched awkwardly upward by the firm hand around one of her braids.

 

“Why are you like this?! Why can’t you just—?” The question ended in an unintelligible grunt of frustration. He wasn’t just mad, he was baffled by her. He was exasperated by her. He was done.

 

The ditch was overflowing. The hem of her dress floated above her fully submerged knees. She screamed. Not because she hurt. (And she did.) Not because she was angry. (And she was.) She was done too. Just _done_. With the town, with people, with trying to be a person.

 

Her nails scrabbled against her brother’s forearm. She dug them in until he let her go. With a splash and a squelch of mud, she slid down further into the ditch. Water kicked up into her face and eyes. There were hands on her shoulders. She grabbed a handful of shirt. Twice her head went under. She couldn’t see and she couldn’t breathe. A knee collided with her hip and she felt a sharp pain in the top of her thigh.

 

She had empty vials in her pocket. Ones Yeza had brought her. She reached down, found the one that was most intact. The jagged end of it snapped and collapsed in pieces against her palm as she smashed it upward. She got him in the bicep she thought as he jerked away from her startled and seething.

 

Veth kicked at him. She scrambled to her feet. He probably could have caught her. She was sure he could have caught her. Easier to let a cornered animal go. She’d have to come home eventually. She’d regret everything then. She always did.

 

For now she ran. She ran for the trees. Ran as far as the river. The rain wasn’t coming down as hard as it had been, but that didn’t matter. She was already soaked.

 

She stopped on the river bank, scrubbed a hand across her face to try and get the mud out of her eyes. They stung. She screamed again and balled her fists and stomped her foot down on a half-rotted log.

 

And then she was scared. It came crashing down on her as the adrenaline left her body. She had messed up. _Oh,_ she had messed up. Veth sank to the ground and pulled her knees into her chest. Her body shook and she wasn’t sure if it was because she was cold or just very, _very_ frightened. She started to cry.

 

It might have been seconds or minutes before she realized Yeza was standing at the edge of the trees. She wasn’t sure when he had gotten there. He looked scared too.

 

He was scared of her, she realized. He’d seen. Half the town had probably seen. She wondered how she looked right now. Surely not like a person.

 

“I’m sorry,” she said, and he closed some of the distance between them. He stopped a few feet away, hesitated, then closed the rest. “I’m sorry,” she said again as he crouched down in front of her.

 

His eyes were still wide but, slowly, he took her by the wrists. He pulled her hands down from where they were twisted in her hair. “I… I, ah, don’t think anyone else knows where you went.” He must have noticed her looking past him, scanning the spaces between the trees for movement. “I think it’s just me.” He sounded nervous about it. He sounded afraid to be alone with her.

 

They stayed like that for a very long time. Him crouched down, hands around her wrists. Her sitting there. Shivering. “I fucked up,” she said finally. Plainly. Finite.

 

“Um…” Yeza looked uncertain. “Yeah,” he amended slowly.

 

“I’m just— I’m going to stay here.”

 

“That’s… That’s probably a good idea.”

 

“From now on.”

 

“That’s… probably a less good idea.”

 

Veth met his gaze. Eye contact didn’t feel so scary presently. It was dwarfed by other, more pressing things. “I’m _not_ a good person.”

 

Yeza let go of her wrists then. He sat down. It had stopped raining completely now, but the ground was still wet. “I don’t know.” Slowly, he reached for her hand. She let him take it and he turned it over in his lap. It was bleeding, she realized. There was still some glass stuck in it. Yeza was pale as he pulled it out. He didn’t strike her as the sort of person who was good with blood. “I think you’re better than a lot of people.”

 

Veth didn’t believe that.

 

“I think you’re better than me.”

 

Veth definitely didn’t believe _that._ “You’re the best person I know.”

 

Yeza looked down. He let go of her hand. “I feel like a good person would probably do something.”

 

“What?”

 

“Like… defend or protect you or something? Anything? Literally do anything other than just… than just stand there.”

 

Veth didn’t know what to say to that, so she said nothing. Instead she sat very still as Yeza pulled his sleeve down over his hand and rubbed it over the bridge of her nose and across her cheeks. It came back muddy, undoubtedly stained.

 

He moved close, scooted over until they were shoulder to shoulder. She should tell him to go home. His parents were probably worried. He’d be in trouble tomorrow. Less trouble than she was in, but trouble all the same.

 

But she didn’t want him to go home. She tried to tell him he should but selfishness only let a few scattered syllables leave her mouth.

 

Yeza put an arm around her shoulders. It didn’t offer any safety, but she felt strangely less afraid. She thought again about how she should tell him he could go home. Someone better would have.

 

Yeza squeezed her arm and she felt him relax a little, like he was less afraid too. “You’re a good person.”

 

“I’m not.”

 

There was silence for a little while then as Yeza seemed to consider that. “You’re a good person,” he said again, more certain this time.

 

And Veth still didn’t believe him, but she hoped he would keep telling her until she did.

**Author's Note:**

> I have a couple follow up fics to this one rattling around in my head. Whether I have the motivation to write them or not depends on if there's a demand for it. Comments are much appreciated. They help me justify shirking my responsibilities to write fanfiction about other people's DnD characters. This wasn't my fandom a month ago. How did I even get here?


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